Developers of Web sites or FTP (file transfer protocol) sites, particularly complex sites, first need to determine how the various files of that site are to be organized. Then, appropriate directories are created according to the planned organization, for example, separate directories are created for storing HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) pages and for storing program files, e.g., Active Server Pages (ASP) applications or custom programs. Once created, the directories containing the documents that are to be published are specified to a management service or the like. One of the directories is a home directory, which is the root directory for a site wherein content files are stored. The home directory is accessible to the user and contains files and programs, and typically contains the home page, i.e., the initial page of information for a collection of pages. In other words, the home directory is the central location for published pages, and often includes a home page or index file that welcomes users and contains links to other pages in the site.
In general, two types of directories may be created, virtual directories and physical directories. A physical directory is one that is under the home directory, while a virtual directory is any directory not contained within the home directory. For example, a virtual directory may correspond to a different local drive of the same machine, or a network drive, and may be used so that the one drive having the home directory thereon is not overly burdened. Virtual directories are typically used for complex sites or to specify different URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) for different parts of a site.
Both virtual and physical drives appear to client browsers as if they were within the home directory, i.e., they may be accessed below the home page in some hierarchical manner. For example, a user may type http://exair to access a site's home page and http://exair/samples to access another page or the like on that site below the home page. Although to the user it appears that the exair/samples page is within the exair/home directory, in actuality the files on that page physically may be on a different local or remote network disk drive. The user does not know of the actual underlying organization, but only perceives the URL path hierarchy.
Network administrators, however, have heretofore always had to deal with the actual locations of the directories. This is because administrative tools are device-oriented rather than site-oriented. For example, to change a property on a file under the home directory, the administrator would use a local user interface, while to change a property on a remote file, the administrator would use a user interface for remote operation, such as a network browser. In other words, in existing site management applications and tools, the physical and virtual namespaces are displayed as different entities. Further, existing management tools have not provided any indication of the site's hierarchy, whereby to manage a site, the administrator must work through various mappings in order to locate the various directories and files therein. As a result, if there is some relationship between properties of files, the administrator is unable to take advantage of this relationship. In particular, when files are stored at different physical locations, the administrator must not only work with the individual files, but also must do so via the distinct types of management tools.